MIT Waitlist Acceptance Rate

Was your child waitlisted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology? If so, you’re probably wondering if they’ve got a genuine shot of earning admission to the Institute or if being waitlisted is akin to being rejected.

The short answer? There are years in which MIT will reach deep down its waitlist. There are other years in which MIT will not turn to its waitlist. MIT’s institutional needs can’t be predicted, so if your child is waitlisted, all they can do is give it the best shot possible to get out of limbo. MIT’s waitlist is not ranked.

But let’s dive in to learn more about the specifics of the MIT waitlist acceptance rates through history and how your child can optimize their case for admission off that list!

MIT Waitlist Acceptance Rates and Statistics

And while that’s all the data made available by MIT to the Common Data Set, we believe no students earned admission off the waitlist to the MIT Classes of 2007, 2006, or 2005.

As longtime MIT admissions officer Matt McGann wrote on MIT’s admissions blog in 2012, “Last year we admitted 27 students from the waitlist. The year before that, we admitted 65 students from the waitlist, and the year before that we admitted 78 students. A few years earlier, however, there was a four year stretch where we didn’t take anyone from the waitlist…Over the past few years, the ‘waitlist admit rate’ has ranged from 0% to 18%.”

Your Chances of Admission Off the MIT Waitlist

Over the last 19 years of available waitlist admissions data, MIT has turned to its waitlist in all but six years. However, there was an additional year in which MIT accepted only one student off its 524-student waitlist. So if you want to count it as seven years of no waitlist acceptances, we understand.

Over the 13 years in which MIT turned to its waitlist — beginning with the Class of 2026 and spanning through the Class of 2009 — MIT’s average waitlist acceptance rate stood at 6.93%. If one removes the Class of 2009 (the year MIT admitted only one student off its waitlist), its waitlist acceptance rate shoots up to 7.5%.

Overall, if MIT does decide to turn to its waitlist in a given year, MIT, historically, does not admit hundreds of students out of limbo. Instead, the school admits an average of 32.92 students. If one removes the Class of 2009, the year only one student got off the waitlist, the average number of students accepted by MIT off the waitlist shoots up to 35.58 students.

How to Improve Your Chances of Admission Off the MIT Waitlist

Over the last 30 years, around 43% of students who first come to Ivy Coach after being placed on the MIT waitlist have earned admission. We have a two-step process for waitlisted students, which goes as follows:

1. Complete Ivy Coach’s PostMortem application review. We must see what a student did right and what they did wrong. The story we help craft can’t present a different applicant. Instead, there must be a throughline between the narrative shared on the MIT application — just told much more powerfully.
2.  Submit a compelling Letter of Continued Interest within the portal’s 500-word MIT text box. Most students correctly know they should submit a letter after being placed on MIT’s waitlist if they hope to earn admission. And most know they should do so promptly. But most students send the wrong kind of letter. Ivy Coach’s letters to Dartmouth contain no brags or updates. It’s a big reason why students who first come to Ivy Coach after being waitlisted have the success they do. We motivate MIT admissions officers to want to go to bat for our students. Our students effectively dare admissions officers not to offer them admission.

Getting Started with Ivy Coach on Approaching the MIT Waitlist

If you’re interested in giving your child the best possible shot of admission off the MIT waitlist, how they approach the MIT 500-word waitlist box matters big time. So fill out Ivy Coach’s free consultation form, indicate that your child has been waitlisted, and we’ll be in touch to delineate our MIT waitlist service.